³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Philae lander detects organic molecules on Comet 67P Rosetta scientist, Professor Monica Grady from the Open University discusses the latest news from last week's historic comet mission. Philae, the Rosetta robot probe, made history last week when she finally landed on the surface of Comet 67P. But she ended up lying on her side, and only in partial sunlight. Her batteries were on borrowed time. After around 60 hours, Philae powered down, and went into hibernation mode. However, her instruments harvested some data and now the first results are in.

HIV Community Groups
Mozambique is one of the countries with the highest HIV prevalences in the world with at least 1.6 million people living with the infection. But only half a million of these patients are on life-saving antiretroviral therapy due to drugs not being available and the cumbersome process of accessing them, especially in rural areas. In a bid to tackle this, Médecins Sans Frontières started community groups that enabled patients to collect medicine on behalf of their other group members. As the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’s Emmanuel Igunza reports from Maputo, the programme is reaping huge benefits seven years after it began.

Philippines Disaster Mapping
A collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world has been used in various useful ways following humanitarian disasters in recent years. In Haiti it was used to locate survivors in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. One year on from Typhoon Haiyan in which 6,000 people died in the Philippines, humanitarian volunteers are working with the Filipino government to roll out OSM training in disaster-prone areas. It is hoped that it will help communities prepare better for future disasters. Vishva Samani attended one of the workshops in the Bohol region of the country.

Agricultural Emissions
Growing and harvesting both crops and livestock are greenhouse gas intensive, emitting large amounts of not only carbon dioxide but also methane and nitrous oxides. These perhaps hidden emissions are now getting more international attention, particularly as global trade in agriculture means that emissions are hard to assign – is it the country that produced or consumed the beef chicken or pork that has to account for it? A new study has just analysed the production and conveyance of these emissions. Pierre Gerber, Senior Policy Officer at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, and Dr David Styles from the School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography at the University of Bangor, discuss the importance of understanding how these greenhouse gas emissions are moved between countries through agricultural trade.

Where does the Moon come from?
Although humans first walked on the Moon over four decades ago, we still know surprisingly little about the lunar body’s origin. Samples returned by the Apollo missions have somewhat confounded scientists’ ideas about how the Moon was formed. Its presence is thought to be due to another planet colliding with the early Earth, causing an extraordinary giant impact, and in the process, forming the Moon. But, analysing chemicals in Apollo’s rock samples has revealed that the Moon could be much more similar to Earth itself than any potential impactor.

Ebola tracking
A team from SGI, GIS Federal and The University of Minnesota have created a tool using cell phone positioning data which could be used to map the spread of Ebola. The tool contains data on people movement, allows flagging one or more people as infected, backtracking where those people have been, and shows other people who may have been infected by having been in contact with infected people.

Photo Credit: Comet 67P. European Space Agency